Po­lit­i­cal party postal vote ap­pli­ca­tions you may re­ceive are not from us: VEC

THE Vic­to­rian Elec­toral Com­mis­sion (VEC) is aware of postal vote ap­pli­ca­tions that have been sent to Vic­to­rian elec­tors, en­closed with ma­te­rial from po­lit­i­cal par­ties and can­di­dates.

Elec­toral com­mis­sioner, War­wick Gately AM, has stressed that these postal vote ap­pli­ca­tions have not been sent by the VEC.

The VEC is po­lit­i­cally im­par­tial and in­de­pen­dent of gov­ern­ment and does not distribute postal vote ap­pli­ca­tions di­rect to house­holds.

“If you have re­ceived a postal vote ap­pli­ca­tion in the mail en­closed with cam­paign ma­te­rial, it was not sent by the VEC, it was sent to you by a reg­is­tered po­lit­i­cal party,” said Mr Gately.

‘Un­der the Elec­toral Act 2002, a po­lit­i­cal party is per­mit­ted to en­close a postal vote ap­pli­ca­tion with a let­ter or flyer from the party or a can­di­date, as long as the postal vote ap­pli­ca­tion is not at­tached to, or forms part of the po­lit­i­cal ma­te­rial or is mod­i­fied in any way.

“Any ap­pli­ca­tions at­tached to or re­turned with po­lit­i­cal ma­te­rial re­ceived by the VEC will be re­jected.

“It’s a mat­ter I take very se­ri­ously.” Mr Gately en­cour­aged those un­sure or un­com­fort­able about re­spond­ing to an un­so­licited postal vote ap­pli­ca­tion to use the postal vote ap­pli­ca­tion on­line at vec.vic.gov.au, which takes five min­utes to com­plete.

On­line postal vote ap­pli­ca­tions must be com­pleted by no later than 6pm Wed­nes­day, Novem­ber 21.